''The Surrender of Tournavos'' (French: ''La Prise de Tournavos''), also known as ''La Prise de Tournavos par les Troupes du Sultan'', is an 1897 short

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized Sound recording and reproduction, recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) ...

directed by Georges Méliès.

Production

On 20–23 April 1897, in an early fight in the Greco–Turkish War of 1897, Greek and Turkish forces battled in the town of

Tyrnavos Tyrnavos ( el, Τύρναβος) is a municipality in the Larissa regional unit, of the Thessaly region of Greece. It is the second-largest town of the Larissa regional unit, after Larissa. The town is near the mountains and the Thessalian Plain ...

(also spelled Turnavos or Tournavos) on the plain of Larissa. The Greeks were defeated and left the town. Méliès's film is a staged reconstruction of a scene in the battle. The film was made on a set designed in Méliès's recognizable style. Though Méliès usually staged his actors in theatrically inspired blocking and filmed them from a frontal

long shot In photography, filmmaking and video production, a wide shot (sometimes referred to as a full shot or long shot) is a shot that typically shows the entire object or human figure and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surro ...

viewpoint, the actors in ''The Surrender of Tournavos'' are staged more three-dimensionally, sometimes coming very near the camera.

Release and survival

''The Surrender of Tournavos'' is one of four reconstructed newsreels (''actualités reconstituées'') Méliès made in 1897 to illustrate recent events in the Greco–Turkish War of that year. It was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 106 in its catalogues. In the United Kingdom, the film was sold by the

Warwick Trading Company The Warwick Trading Company was a British film production and distribution company, which operated between 1898 and 1915. History The Warwick Trading Company had its origins in the London office of Maguire and Baucus, a firm run by two American ...

, where it was advertised as ''Troopers Last Stand'' and described as "an incident of the Turko-Grecian war". Other exhibitors advertised it under different names: in June 1897 in Germany, Philipp Wolff advertised it as ''Capture of a House in Turnavos''; in the United Kingdom, Wolff called it ''Turks Attacking a House Defended By Greeks (Turnavos)''; and in the United States in 1898, Eberhardt Schneider billed it as ''Defence of a House, Turco-Grecian War''. A brief report in a British trade publication, ''Photograms of the Year'', is the only known contemporary description of the film. The film was presumed

lost Lost may refer to getting lost, or to: Geography *Lost, Aberdeenshire, a hamlet in Scotland * Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail, or LOST, a hiking and cycling trail in Florida, US History *Abbreviation of lost work, any work which is known to have bee ...

until 2007, when the film scholar Stephen Bottomore identified a surviving print in the collection of the

National Film and Television Archive The BFI National Archive is a department of the British Film Institute, and one of the largest film archives in the world. It was founded as the National Film Library in 1935; its first curator was Ernest Lindgren. In 1955, its name became the N ...

in London. A print also survives at the

Centre national de la cinématographie Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricit ...

References

External links

* 1897 films French silent short films French black-and-white films Films directed by Georges Méliès Greco-Turkish War (1897) Films set in Greece Films set in Thessaly 1890s rediscovered films Rediscovered French films 1897 short films 1890s French films Tyrnavos {{1890s-France-film-stub